I am delighted to be on this blog tour today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
Genre: Historical Fiction – Historical Romance – Historical Asian Fiction
Publication Date: 2014
Estimated Page Count: 325
Standalone Novel in a collection of novels set in SE Asia entitled Echoes of Empire
Author Content Warnings: It depicts battle scenes from WW2 in Malaya and also upsetting and brutal treatment of POWs by Japanese guards and soldiers.
Amazon: https://amzn.to/4iDJ66A
Bamboo Heart – Background to the story
At the end of the Second World War allied intelligence services asked newly released prisoners of war to complete Liberation Questionnaires. My novel, Bamboo Heart, started life when I discovered my father’s liberation questionnaire in the National Archives at Kew. It was an amazing moment when I first saw it; written in his own handwriting, it answered so many questions I would like to have asked. From that moment I knew I had to write about his experiences as a prisoner-of-war on the Death Railway in Thailand.
This discovery was the culmination of a lifetime’s quest to find out what had happened to my dad during the war. He died when I was only seven, and growing up I became increasingly interested in his past. He hardly spoke about the war, having started a new life with my mother on his return to England in 1945. I was interested enough to travel to Kanchanaburi to see the railway in 1988. On that trip I fell in love with Southeast Asia but found out very little about what had happened to Dad there.
The Wampo viaduct on the Thai-Burma railway 1988.
I took the tragic events Dad described in his questionnaire as the basis of Tom’s story in Bamboo Heart. I wanted to write about those events from the perspective of one man, within the framework of a fast-moving narrative. My aim was to bring those events alive without it feeling like a history lesson.
The scenes I was describing were harrowing. So, to lighten the mood, I broke it up with flashbacks to Tom’s pre-war life in colonial Penang, where he fell in love. I also introduced a parallel modern plot, the story of Tom’s own daughter, Laura’s, search for the truth about the war. For Laura’s story I drew upon my own life as a disaffected young city lawyer in the eighties, and upon my memories of those times. The novel touches on the Wapping Riots, which I remember well as I lived in North London at the time. Co-incidentally the first day of serious rioting was 15th February 1986, the anniversary of the Fall of Singapore, which I used in Chapter 1 of Bamboo Heart.
I tried to tell a story of hope and survival, to examine the reasons why some survived the worst of ordeals and others sadly did not. I also wanted to show what an important role history plays in all our lives; how powerfully our family’s past affects our own choices and values.
My research for Bamboo Heart taught me so much more about the war in Southeast Asia than I had expected… I had not previously known how civilians suffered; about starvation and massacres, about bravery and sacrifice. It inspired me to explore those events from other angles and through other peoples’ stories.
Bamboo Heart became the first novel in a trilogy which included Bamboo Island, about Juliet, a planter’s wife, who has lived a reclusive life since the war robbed her of everyone she loved. The sudden appearance of a stranger disrupts her lonely existence and stirs up unsettling memories; and Bamboo Road, written from the perspective of a young Thai woman, living in Kanchanaburi in 1942. It tells of how the influx of the Japanese army and their prisoners-of-war into that remote jungle region affects her life.
Inspired by the success of these books, I went on to include them in my Echoes of Empire Collection and have written five further books about WWII in Southeast Asia. The latest of these, The Lotus House is about American nurses (the Angels of Bataan) and US soldiers during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. That book was published in October 2024 and I’m currently writing another one to add to the collection.
Book blurb:
From award-winning author Ann Bennett comes a captivating WW2 novel of love and survival – a daughter’s journey of discovery and a soldier’s strength in the bleakest of times.
When Laura Ellis, a successful city lawyer, arrives home to see her dying father Tom, a mysterious stranger is watching the house. This leads her to embark on a journey to discover their connection.
To do so, she has to retrace her father’s steps; to the Bridge on the River Kwai: where as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, Tom endured disease, torture and endless days of slavery; and to the beautiful island of Penang, to uncover his secrets from the 1930s.
For Tom made himself a promise: to return home. Not to the grey streets of London, where he once lived, but to Penang, where he found paradise and love.
As Laura searches for the truths Tom refused to tell her, in the places where he once suffered, lived and loved, she will finally find out the story behind his survival, and discover her own path to love and happiness..
This book has previously been published both as Bamboo Heart and as A Daughter’s Quest. It won the won the award for fiction published in Asia, Asian Books Blog, 2015 and was shortlisted for “Best Fiction Title” in the Singapore Book Awards 2016.
Praise for A Daughter’s Quest.
‘A powerful story brilliantly told. Five Stars.’ Richard Kandler, author of The Prisoner List.
‘This outstanding novel is a powerful reminder of what prisoners of the Japanese suffered…‘ Amazon reviewer.
Purchase Links
https://books2read.com/u/mllPNW
Author Bio – Ann Bennett is a British author of historical fiction. Her first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, was inspired by researching her father’s experience as a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and by her own journey to uncover his story. It won the Asian Books Blog prize for fiction published in Asia in 2015, and was shortlisted for the best fiction title in the Singapore Book Awards 2016.
That initial inspiration led her to write more books about WWII in Southeast Asia – Bamboo Island: The Planter’s Wife, A Daughter’s Promise, Bamboo Road: The Homecoming, The Tea Planter’s Club, The Amulet, and The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu. Along with The Lotus House, published in October 2024, they make up the Echoes of Empire Collection.
Ann is also the author of The Oriental Lake Collection – The Lake Pavilion and The Lake Palace, both set in British India during the 1930s and WWII, and The Lake Pagoda and The Lake Villa, set in French Indochina during the same period. A Rose in the Blitz – the first in the Sisters of War series and set in London during WWII, was published in March 2024.
The Lake Pagoda won a bronze medal for historical fiction in Asia in the Coffee Pot Book Club, Book of the Year awards 2022. The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu won a silver medal for dual-timeline historical fiction, and A Rose in the Blitz won bronze in the historical romance category in the Coffee
Pot Book Club, Book of the Year awards 2024.
The Runaway Sisters, USA Today bestselling The Orphan House, The Child Without a Home and The Forgotten Children are set in Europe during the same era and are published by Bookouture. Her latest book, The Stolen Sisters, published on 29th November 2024 is the follow-up to The Orphan List (published by Bookouture in August this year) and is set in Poland and Germany during WWII.
A former lawyer, Ann is married with three grown up sons and a granddaughter and lives in Surrey, UK. For more details, please visit www.annbennettauthor.com
Social Media Links –
Twitter: https://x.com/annbennett71
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annbennettauthor/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annbennettauthor/
Giveaway to Win a Paperback copy of The Lotus House by Ann Bennett (Open INT)
*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/33c69494611/
I love that author post. I have added this book to my TBR shelf. It sounds amazing.
Oh yay! I can’t wait to see what you think when you get to it.